A Bates College student aiming to become a railroad systems engineer has received a prestigious Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship to support her studies.

A sophomore, Joanna Moody of Charlottesville, Va., is triple-majoring in physics, math and Japanese. Moody has spent the current academic year at Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan.

The scholarship program honoring the late Sen. Barry M. Goldwater was designed to foster and encourage outstanding students to pursue careers in mathematics, the natural sciences and engineering. The Goldwater is the premier undergraduate award of its type in these fields.

Moody is one of 282 U.S. students to receive a Goldwater Scholarship for the 2012–13 academic year. The one- and two-year scholarships cover the cost of tuition, fees, books and room and board up to a maximum of $7,500 per year.

A second Bates student, Daniel Peach of Madison, Ala., received an honorable mention from the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation. Peach, a junior mathematics and philosophy major at Bates, plans to conduct research in numerical analysis and algorithm design while teaching at the graduate-school level.

Moody intends to earn a doctorate in systems engineering after she graduates from Bates, with the longer-term goal of a career in railroad traffic control technology.

“The Goldwater Scholarship is recognition of my efforts and ambitions,” says Moody. “It’s a green light that affirms that I should continue to study in pursuit of my career dreams despite the many obstacles that I may face along the way.”

Moody has studied Japanese language and culture, as well as business and economics, during her stay in Japan. Less formally, she has also researched the significance of railroads in Japanese culture. “I’ve focused on how the railroad historically was a symbol of Japanese modernization, and how today it remains an integral part of the social network of Japan,” says Moody, a rail fan whose train travels in Japan have been as much for enjoyment as research.

“I’m interested in comparing this train-oriented society with the car-oriented society of America,” she says. “I’ve always preferred the feeling of trains over other forms of transportation, but as I’ve learned more about it, I’ve realized that it’s a shame that more Americans don’t utilize the railroad for environmental and economic reasons as well.”

In her first two years at Bates, Moody’s activities included participation in the physics lab of assistant professor Nathan Lundblad, who researches atomic behavior at ultralow temperatures. Moody’s contributions included computer programming and hands-on work with experimental apparatus, including lasers and vacuum chambers.

“I chose Bates because I wanted an academically rigorous, well-rounded liberal arts education in a small school where I could have strong relationships with my professors,” Moody says.

But she has found, in addition, that Bates “has been flexible in accommodating my rather unusual course of study at the school,” including approving her triple major and allowing her to pursue studies in Japan.

“I’m very grateful for this flexibility and the control it gives me over what I chose to study.”

The Goldwater Foundation is a federally endowed agency. Since its first award in 1989, it has bestowed more than 6,200 scholarships worth approximately $39 million.

]]>http://www.bates.edu/news/2012/04/13/goldwater-moody/feed/0Open to the World: Spain, ‘down the Plains’ come to Maine as poetry fest beginshttp://www.bates.edu/news/2011/10/31/ottw-translations/
http://www.bates.edu/news/2011/10/31/ottw-translations/#commentsMon, 31 Oct 2011 18:23:05 +0000http://www.bates.edu/news/?p=50337It had to be said: Sometimes, “something gets found in translation, too.”...]]>

From left, Mary Rice-DeFosse, Francisca López, and Jane Costlow listen as Rhea Coté Robbins reads one of her poems.

It had to be said: Sometimes, “something gets found in translation, too.”

This truth was stated during the opening of Translations: Cross-Cultural Exchange Through Poetry, the second edition of an innovative festival dedicated to the translation of poetry, a creative act every bit as demanding as the making of a new poem.

The speaker was Jane Costlow, professor of environmental studies, who welcomed the listeners filling Chase Lounge late in the afternoon of Oct. 25. If poet Robert Frost felt that poetry gets lost in translation, Costlow said, what gets found is “the beginning of wisdom”: a glimmering of our own places amidst “the vast variety of human creativity.”

Poet Rhea Coté Robbins reads.

The session was the first of five readings during the festival, which runs through Oct. 29 (and includes a conference on the practice of translation). Most of the poets write in languages other than English, and the festival’s format is the simultaneous presentation of poems in both the author’s voice and English translations, created by Bates faculty and students and projected as text on a screen.

Following Costlow’s welcome were readings by poets Rhea Coté Robbins, a Franco-American writer, editor and teacher from Brewer, Maine; and Francisca López, Bates professor of Spanish.

Costlow established a helpful conceptual landscape for the listeners. She situated the festival in the context of the week’s Open to the World: Bates Celebrates Unbounded Learning events, marking the renovation of two academic buildings that are, as she said, “devoted to the study of language, culture and our complex ethical relationships to each other and to the more-than-human world.”

And Costlow suggested that the meanings of poetry are not always textual. “I invite you, for at least part of each poet’s reading, to forget about what it means, and just submerse yourself in the music.”

The music began with Coté Robbins, whose early life in “down the Plains” — a Francophone neighborhood in the Maine mill town of Waterville — resonated through her work. She was one of the festival’s two poets reading in English (the other being Bates senior lecturer in English Robert Farnsworth). Reading quickly and undramatically, she delivered more than 20 poems animated by the tensions of unattainable dreams and of class and gender conflict.

From left, poets Naomi Otsubo and Polina Barskova listen attentively.

In her father’s mill the papermaking machines cook, gas, electrocute and eat the workers. The bosses in her mother’s shirt factory urge the women to work “Faster, Faster, Faster.” Women — Coté herself, Peyton Place author Grace Metalious — negotiate the visceral conflict between creative and family needs.

“We Spread the Dirt” depicts Coté Robbins and family bringing to her parents’ graves soil from France, in lieu of the homeland visit they could never make:

we are priests
without ritual—
Eiffel Tower pink-tinted dirt and rocks
for her
France-on-the-Loire brown
country farmer’s soil
for him

A native of Andalusia, in southern Spain, López writes poetry in Spanish. The festival translations of her 13 poems were created by departmental colleague and festival organizer Claudia Aburto Guzmán.

Francisca López speaks with a member of the audience after the reading.

López described herself as a rational person for whom poetry is a way to address the questions that rationality can’t touch. Where Coté’s work was markedly social and political, López’s poems were more abstract, organic, inward-looking, intimate. Her reading style, too, was softer, closer.

“Jump to the Abyss” was an attempt to make sense of a student’s senseless death:

you greet, joke, toast with someone
in the distance

and get closer . . .
to the wings of glass

for your flight
toward the encounter.

“The Soul’s Rags” could be about the people of our past who become like ghosts: “you lay dozing with me / in the silence of eternity.” “The Kiss” may describe the imbalance of power in a passionate encounter:

You keep the air
the hunger and thirst
the joy and sorrow
the need to move on

A senior from Pomona, Calif., double-majoring in Spanish and in women and gender studies, Jeanette Mariscal was running the Translations slide projection for the second year. Last year, she said, hearing German poet Lothar Quinkenstein gave her a whole new sense of the expressive capability of the German language.

Hearing poetry as opposed to simply taking it off the page, she said, “gives it life. When they read it, you get a better feel for their thinking.”

“In truth, poetry is as much a performance as anything else,” Aburto Guzmán remarked after the readings. “All these poets are good at that.”

So the foreign language faculty took an hour or so during the afternoon of Oct. 27, the day the newly renovated Bill and Hedge Hall were dedicated, to present a sampling of courses and projects in their repertoire.

Dedicated to the idea of educating students for global citizenship, here are a few highlights from the presentation in the brand-new Language Resource Center:

Alex Dauge-Roth, associate professor of French, talked about his course “Border and Disorders in French and Francophone Literature and Films.” An apt choice for a week of Bates programming devoted to breaking down borders, the course examines representations of inclusion and exclusion — for example, two opposing political ads that use, in nearly identical ways, the symbol of a black sheep among white ones to support either openness to immigration or rejection of it. “The idea is to complexify for students how they define their borders,” Dauge-Roth said. “You cannot be at home without excluding others.”

Against a backdrop of Central European images taken last year by Rachel Morrison ’13, Professor of German Craig Decker offered a capsule history of Bates Fall Semester Abroad programs in Vienna and Berlin. Noting that all FSA programs, not just the German-language trips, are interdisciplinary by design, he said, “It’s interesting to see how students combine what goes on in the two courses.” It’s a kind of synthesis “that doesn’t always happen on campus.”

Sarah Strong, professor of Japanese, cut to the heart of cross-cultural exchange in describing her course “The Fantastic in Modern Japan.” Looking at comics, fiction and anime film, the course encourages students to discover what’s common among cultures — but more important, to “encounter what is unfamiliar that they can learn about and bring into their sphere of understanding.” For example, how the young heroine in the manga and film Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind comes to terms with the toxic fungal forest that is consuming a post-apocalyptic world.

A fascinating translation project undertaken by Professor of Spanish Francisca López, Lecturer in French Laura Balladur and others: Students in certain foreign-language courses have translated work by the poets participating in the college’s annual Translations international poetry festival (taking place concurrently with the Open to the World events). During the festival, the student translations have been projected on a screen while the poets read them in the original language. For the second part of the course, the students translate into French and Spanish poems written by students in a poetry course taught by Senior Lecturer in English Robert Farnsworth — and all the students, translators and translated, meet to discuss the linguistic and cultural issues that are gained in translation.

During the first Translations poetry festival at Bates College, in 2010, organizer Claudia Aburto Guzmán had an encounter that seemed to crystallize the event for her.

This innovative festival presented international poets reading their work in the original language, with English translations prepared by Bates faculty and students. Working with Somali poet Omar Ahmed, “it struck me that I was involved in the true practice of communication,” says Aburto Guzmán, associate professor of Spanish.

Note: The time for Rafael Carpintero’s talk has been pushed back to 7 p.m. Friday.

“He and I had to communicate through layers of cultural expectations — his Somali culture and my Chilean culture, in addition to U.S. culture. I had to be so clear with language.”

Taking place Tuesday, Oct. 25, though Saturday, Oct. 29, this year’s festival celebrates cross-cultural communication with readings by poets from the Americas, Europe and Japan. New to the event is an Oct. 27-29 conference, organized by Visiting Assistant Professor of German Raluca Cernahoschi, exploring the art and practice of literary translation.

The festival is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please contact 207-786-8293 or gdumais@bates.edu.

The conference begins with registration at 4:15 p.m. Wednesday in Chase. Conference sessions take place at 8 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 27, and at 9 a.m. Friday and Saturday, Oct. 28-29, in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave.

A closing reception in the Bates College Museum of Art, 75 Russell St., follows the Saturday readings.

Here are the poets and the dates when they read (all the poets read on Oct. 29):Oct. 25: Rhea Coté, of Brewer, Maine, and Bates faculty member Francisca López, a native of Spain; Oct. 26: Miguel Angel Zapata, of Peru, and Naomi Otsubo, a native of Japan living in Maine; Oct. 27: Polina Barskova, a native of Russia, and Bates faculty member Robert Farnsworth; Oct. 28: Danny Plourde, a Francophone poet from Canada, and Carmen Elisabeta Puchianu, a poet from Romania who writes in German.

Conference presenters include Enrique Yepes, a Colombian critic and scholar of Latin American literatures; and Rafael Carpintero of Spain, a translator whose works include Spanish editions of titles by best-selling Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk. Yepes offers the talk Carving the Air: On Poetry Festivals at 7 p.m. Thursday in Chase Lounge, and Carpintero discusses the translation of poetry at 7 p.m. Friday in Chase.

The authors’ work will be available at the Bates College Store, 56 Campus Ave., throughout the festival.

“Poetry, widely defined, can illustrate all issues pertinent to our times and culture,” says Aburto Guzmán. “In the public sphere, translation can help us focus on the challenges involved in cross-cultural communications.”

]]>http://www.bates.edu/news/2011/10/07/translations-festival-2/feed/0U.S. Sen. George Mitchell among speakers for weeklong ‘Unbounded Learning’http://www.bates.edu/news/2011/10/07/open-2world1/
http://www.bates.edu/news/2011/10/07/open-2world1/#commentsFri, 07 Oct 2011 10:56:51 +0000http://home.bates.edu/?p=49401George Mitchell, the former U.S. senator delivers the keynote address during a weeklong celebration of international and interdisciplinary education at Bates]]>

George Mitchell, the former U.S. senator who served as President Obama’s special envoy for Middle East peace until last spring, delivers the keynote address during a weeklong celebration of international and interdisciplinary education at Bates in October.

Mitchell speaks at 5:15 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 27, in the Bates College Chapel, 275 College St. His talk follows the dedication of Hedge and Roger Williams halls, recently renovated by the college into academic facilities that are advancing the Bates education still further across national and interdisciplinary boundaries.

During the 4:15 p.m. dedication, Paul Marks ’83, chairman and CEO of the aerospace materials maker Argosy International Inc., offers remarks about living as a global citizen. Mitchell’s talk and the dedication of Hedge and Roger Williams halls culminate Open to the World: Bates Celebrates Unbounded Learning, the Oct. 24-28 series of events.

The week’s speakers also include Gary Hirshberg P’13, “CE-Yo” of yogurt maker Stonyfield Farm. The full Open to the World schedule will be announced later in October. For more information, please contact 207-786-6336 or arichard@bates.edu.

Here are events that have been confirmed to date:

Monday, Oct. 24: Bates observes United Nations Day.

Tuesday, Oct. 25: Translations: Bates International Poetry Festival opens with a 4 p.m. welcome, readings by international poets at 4:45 accompanied by English translations, and an evening reception at 6, all in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave.

This five-day event includes poets from around the world presenting their work, accompanied by translations created by Bates faculty and students; and a conference on the art and practice of translation. For more information, please contact gdumais@bates.edu or 207-786-8293.

Wednesday, Oct. 26: At 6 p.m. is a screening of Food, Inc., the Academy Award-nominated documentary exposing the corporate-controlled, industrialized underside of American food production. Following the screening at 7:30 p.m., Hirshberg, a prominent figure in Robert Kenner’s 2008 film, offers remarks. Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Thursday, Oct. 27: Hedge and Roger Williams halls are rededicated at 4:30, followed by Mitchell’s keynote. The keynote will be simulcast in Perry Atrium, Pettengill Hall, 4 Andrews Road (Alumni Walk). A reception in the atrium follows Mitchell’s speech.
Friday, Oct. 28: In “Global Possibilities,” five young Bates alums discuss their experiences with initiatives that have both local and global consequences; at 4 p.m. in the Keck Classroom (G52), Pettengill Hall.

Ghosts from Japan and England will share the podium at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 27, in the Benjamin Mays Center, Bates College, when an associate professor of English literature at the University of Kyoto contrasts traditional Japanese ghosts with the spirits in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Professor Toru Sasaki also will participate in a panel discussion titled “Translations East and West” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 30, in Chase Hall Lounge, Campus Avenue, Bates College. Both events are free and open to the public.

Sasaki has published widely, and his works in English include articles about Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy and other Victorian authors. He has edited several English-language volumes by 19th-century authors, including Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s John Marchmont’s Legacy.

The Oct. 30 panel presentation, a conversation among scholars, students and the audience, will look at the process of translating literature and at political and economic factors that influence translation and publication. For the discussion, joining Sasaki will be Jane Costlow, professor of Russian and environmental studies and the Christian A. Johnson Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, Bates College; Melissa Wender, assistant professor of Japanese, Bates College; and Tamae Prindle, Oak Professor of East Asian Language and Literature, Colby College.

Sasaki is the guest of Bates Professor of English Lillian Nayder, who met the Japanese scholar in his country when she delivered a series of lectures on Catherine Dickens, the harried wife of well-known Victorian author Charles Dickens. While at Bates, Sasaki will work with students in two of Nayder’s courses, “Dickens Revisited” and “Mary Elizabeth Braddon.”

Sasaki’s Bates visit is sponsored by the Freeman Foundation, the Tanaka Memorial Foundation, the Mellon Learning Associates Program in the Humanities and the Department of English.